First step is to cut your wood. You can cut this to any real length you want. I ended up making my box about 5.5 x 5.5 x 5.5 so make sure you cut all of your wood to fit which ever size you want. You will have three pieces the same because these will be the top and bottom of your base as well as the top piece of the lamp. Then you will have two pieces for the sides, and one piece for the back.

Step 2: Time for paint

You will want to additionally drill the holes for the cathode as well as the dowel. I used 3/4 inch dowel so I measured four equal lengths and cut them half way into the top piece of the lamp and the top piece of the lamp. Next I drilled a slightly larger hole in the center for the cathode. Don't drill it large enough for the cathode ends, just for the base, I'll explain this soon.

Once you finish some quick cuts you'll be ready for the paint. I went with all black, but go crazy; lime green or orange would probably look sweet in my opinion.

I know this is an old post, but instead of using a power supply couldn't you use a small power inverter? The lamp does output at 12 volts, right? I am only curious, because I am thinking about building one.

Yeah that's correct. I forget where but somewhere in the responses I explained the reason for the PSU. This was built largely from scrap laying around and I had an ancient PC laying around that had a micro power supply, so I took the PSU out from that. It's a bit of overkill, but it also make the project free, lol

yeah, an inverter would do the trick, and the cathode does run on 12v.

lol it's all the rage. You'd be surprised to see what's out there, mine was a bit of a weekend hack project, but (and I warn you this isn't intended as a plug) I run a computer modding site, http://www.fusionmods.net, and I'd bet money that 90% of the users have a dremel of their own.

I actually agree with you on this. The only reason I decided to go with the PSU was because I wanted to do this on the cheap. Everything used in this project was from parts laying around the house. It's actually mentioned in the comments that a PSU might be overkill, and really just about any power source is for something as small as a cathode, but this Micro PSU is only 120watts and was scrapped from and ancient eMachines computers. The spacing wasn't to bad though since it's a bit smaller then the diameter of a CD. If i do this again, theres a few things I'd do differently, but overall, I've been really pleased with the results.

Oh man... this just gave me a great idea! Change the cathode to a UV cathode, swap out the CD's for hard drive platters, wire them up to a transformer, and you have yourself a DIY bug zapper! For the circuit, every other HD platter should be + and - so if something comes between any two plates, the circuit can arc through the object to complete the circuit. Two sets of coils, one heavy gauge surrounding a light gauge, with an AC pulse on the large coil, should induce a very high amp pulse into the smaller coil which is wired to the platters. If the platters come close enough, or something is placed in between them, an arc will occur. Someone more qualified with electronics could verifiy this and/or suggest an alternative

Unfortunately that wont work for a few reasons: 1) UV light doesn't attract the types of bugs you want to zap (a mosquito will fly right by UV light without landing) 2) Bug zappers have two grids and the bug comes between them and completes the circuit. If you were to make each of the platters charged positively or negatively, then you would need some very high voltage. Unfortunately, you would have to worry about corona leakage, and the wires leading to each platter would have to have about 2 inches of insulation on them because high voltage jumps right through normal insulated wire. 3) Other than that (solvable problems), it would cost less to go out and buy a conventional bug zapper than to make one from this lamp.

there they are, thats my old bike, i posted pictures of what happened to it, my neighbor gave me a new bike, so i piecing this one for parts and putting them on that one, same style frame, different brand.

its not properly grounded, as the metal casing of a PSU is added ground protection, i have used PSUs for a 12v power source, and chopped off a female molex (4 pin) connectior and ran wires off of that from the PSU, leaving the PSU untouched, just jumping the purple (?) and ground wires to get pwr. let me know if you want better details.